Over the past year or so, I’ve noticed a particular trend, especially when speaking or holding conferences. Usually when speaking, and discussing the concept of social media linking, I ask a very simple series of questions.
- How many people Tweeted about this (usually the entire room raises their hands)
- How many people shared info about this event on Facebook (usually half the room)
- How many people wrote about this on their blog and/or linked when they did (one or two people)
What’s interesting is that two or three years ago, when I would ask about the blogging, many more hands would pop up. Not just the bloggers’ table (do conferences still have those?) but hands all over the room. Now, the response about blogging has diminished. Why?
There are a number of reasons for the diminishing of blogging or should I say “traditional blogging.” Let’s face it, writing a blog post takes time, energy and for some; grammar skills [of which I have none]. The life-cycle of content sharing, or the sharing of ideas and thoughts, has in many forms, outgrown blogging, or evolved beyond the concept of blogging.
Furthermore, a good amount of influencers and decision makers have evolved along with the medium. As a professional blogger myself, I found that writing 5 to 8 posts a day on the world of search marketing or SEO became, in many ways tiring and repetitive (a reason I LOVE guest blogging).
Once Twitter entered the picture, the ability to share a recommendation or a vote of confidence for thoughts, interests and predictions within the online marketing industry within a more instantaneous and, in some ways, more receptive and targeted group, was not only a relief – but more gratifying in many ways.
With Twitter, I became less interested in the traffic and ad impressions, but more engaged in the conversation. In many ways with the same passion or fury that I had been with iSearch in email discussions 10 years ago or ThreadWatch.org commenting 5 years ago.
Does this mean that blogging is over? Does this mean that blogging is not as fun or influential as it once was?
Of course not. Blogging is the powerful medium that it always has been. Not only it is an essential part of the online publishing world, but also the content that populates blogs also populates search results. BUT what has happened is that in the same way blogging once complemented established websites and news vehicles, microblogging – or better yet, micropublishing – now complements blogging.
Furthermore, instead of trying to push out many pieces of blog content with all of my ideas, or writing two sentence blog posts, now I can focus on the one or two big posts, and share my ideas all day long via other platforms.
Enter Twitter, Facebook & Tumblr – Everyone Now a Publisher
One major tipping point with the adaptation of micro-blogging, is that the concept of the instapublishing of content and information has brought a new generation and expanded adoption into the mix, in a much similar way that blogging did in 2004/2005. Previous to the launch of WordPress and Blogger.com, the web was confined to hard coded content – FTP’d to the server side.
Think about it. Linking used to be one hell of an effort and files actually had to be uploaded to a server in order to hand code a live link … most of the time via dial up or poor connections(what a hassle)! Now I can link to someone from my phone in a matter of seconds 
Blogging made the sharing of information, thought & ideas easily doable via push button publishing – all of the sudden, anyone could become a thought leader online – and conversations from email threads, user groups and forums found their way onto privately controlled, yet publicly shared blog format.
Blogging led to blog networks and the influence of the PageRank economy of linking for SEO purposes, coupled with AdSense monetization, made it profitable and scalable. But the scalability of networks and linking has led to a mistrust of the intent of many blogs – especially when the person behind the curtain is not always clear.
Social Media = Social Proof
What Facebook, Twitter and to a certain extent, Tumblr, now do is bring authenticity to the content. It’s fairly difficult to create a sharing in any of them with just content alone. These social networks are transparent, as user interests, likes, groups and followers all can define the intent and relevancy of the user.
For example, I know absolutely nothing about kitchen counter tops, but I can easily launch a blog, implement some SEO and build some links to rank that site for kitchen counter top oriented search terms. BUT with Facebook, if someone were to go through my interests and profile me, they’d quickly become aware that I know absolutely nothing about counter tops nor home repair.
So ideally, if I were to share a link about counter tops on Facebook, that content would have little value in a ranking algorithm since I am not an expert.
But I am an Expert at SOMETHING!
If I were to share, Like or recommend something about SEO, a post from Mashable, the Baltimore Ravens or possibly even a link to a resource about Reality TV Shows on Facebook – essentially those links would have value, because if you dig into my interests, those are subjects I am passionate about or commonly share with my friends. In an ideal world, I find this use of social proof being much more value than that of an anchor text link.
Likewise, my friends (or followers) also have similar interests, and if someone else who “Likes” the Baltimore Ravens ends up Liking or commenting on a news article, link or video that I shared – that is a highly relevant vote of trust and appreciation for that piece of content – not only by me, but but other similar users. By adding a like button to a website, blog post, item in an online store or where ever : that same vote of confidence and authenticity is then attributed to its source.
So in essence, a person is a better influencer in social media if like-minded people follow them AND support their relevant content. And adding to this, if your site content is shared by vertical influencers, then your content is more relevant to that theme. Which makes these relevancy attributes an important part of defining social SEO parameters and social influencer metrics.
Influencers are always Influencers
One of the cooler points about Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter publishing is that the barrier of entry is so easy [and so cost effective] that almost anyone can become an influencer. And some even have without knowing so – hence the power of incorporating social media metrics into SEO.
Why? Because previously, the link building initiatives around SEO were contained and controlled by a small percentage of the web : SEO’s and publishers. Even with a lot of the latest changes at Google – the bulk of its algorithm is still very dependent upon a style of linking which has been around for 15 years – yet the Internet has changed so much over the past 6 months alone.
Take a moment to step outside of the Internet Marketing box and check out the profiles on Facebook of the people you went to high school with. For me, a quick run through identifies accidental experts and influencers on parenting, hunting, shopping, saving, sports, real estate …etc. With social network based Instapublishing, the people who never wanted to blog, nor ever really were exposed to it, are getting to be almost as influential as publishers.
With social networking signals becoming part of the SEO mix at Google and Bing; now the influencers have gone from being a select few million of bloggers and publishers – to hundreds of millions of Facebook users, Tweeple & Tumblrs. Once the engines expand the dial of influence that these everyday users can contribute, the web will seem less controlled and more under control.
Are Social Signals Equal to Crowd Sourced SEO?
Yes, my rambling does have a purpose. Earlier in the month both Google and Bing confirmed with Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan that Twitter & Facebook signals do influence search rankings. Bing has been a little more transparent, with Facebook circles of friends influencing personalized & local search.
According to Bing, they look at the social authority of a user and Google confirmed that the sharing of information via retweeting and sharing is influential in organic web search and Google News. At the end of the day, these confirmations are heavy reasons to get started utilizing the social web and microblogging as ways to grow your site or business in the eyes of the search engines (along with traditional SEO methods – which are still as important as ever).
What I think is really cool about this is that it is also confirmation that Google & Bing are looking at more than the coded link and on-site content to rank and file web search results. Essentially they are looking at how the microbloggers of the world, the REAL people out there, share and process information – adding social signals to the mix. Believe me, by embracing and engaging the world of insta-publishing, businesses and publishers can gain an upper hand on their competition.
The Evolution of the Link has progressed over the past decade, and ultimately search along with it. We’ve gone from hand coded HTML to blogging to tagging and now Tweeting, Reblogging & Recommending. Push button publishing and voting is now a part of the normal online lifestyle and whether Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr users know it or not, they are part of a publishing migration that the search engines are slowly adapting to. Make sure your business adapts too!
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IMHO crowdsourcing is the incorrect word for people commenting, tweeting or any other socially enabled behaviour regarding an individuals social valuation and their ability to influence SEO on the sites they interactive with or on their behalf.
Blogging let you to create a brand imagen; while on social networks (microblogging) you are the brand, you must be specialist or to have many friends, you get a community faster, but archive´s post is less important.
But most important is both are compatible
I can defintly identify with you about two thing:
1. I also LOVE guest blogging because its very hard to keep the great unique content coming in.
I had some blogs running and after about a year I felt “empty” so I started reviewing and posting about other sites until I came up with other ideas.
2. Yep you can get only your good content for your blog and the small things for your tweeter, but what about the traffic you get from google?
3. Very interesting your aproach about the social media= social proof, I belive that the social brought quick kill of the NoFollow era.
Thank, Moshe Samuel, Israel.
It’s true Loren. the traditional blogging is time consuming and now with twitter and facebook, the internet marketing has formed a new shape. It’s right that it’s because these new techniques are cost effective too.
Great Post!
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The power of SEO has enabled us to establish a six figure income on our sites just through SE traffic that leads to clicks or purchases from one of our advertised affiliates.
And the future looks even better as each day more and more people get on the web!
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